With No One As Witness

CHAPTER FIVE

BY THE NEXT DAY, TWO PIECES OF NEWS FROM SO7 GAVE cause for what went for good cheer. The two tyre prints at the scene of the St. George’s Gardens body had been identified by manufacturer. They’d also been characterised by a peculiar wearing pattern on one of them that was going to please the Crown prosecutors, when and if the Met made an arrest of someone in possession of those tyres and a vehicle to which they might be attached. The other piece of news had to do with the residue on the pedals and the gears of the bicycle in St. George’s Gardens as well as the residue on all four of the bodies they were dealing with: It was all identical. From this, the murder squad concluded that Kimmo Thorne had been picked up somewhere-bike and all-and murdered somewhere else, after which his killer dumped the body, the bike, and probably the silver photo frames in St. George’s Gardens. All of this constituted meagre progress, but progress all the same. So when Hamish Robson returned to them with his report, Lynley was inclined to forgive him for showing up three and a half hours later than the promised twenty-four hours he’d thought it would take him to assemble some usable information.

Dee Harriman fetched him from reception and returned him to Lynley’s office. He said no to the offer of an afternoon cup of tea and instead he nodded towards the conference table rather than taking one of the two chairs in front of the desk. It seemed a subtle way of telegraphing equality to Lynley. Despite his apparent reticence, Robson didn’t appear to be a man who was going to be easily cowed by anyone.

He carried with him a legal pad, a manila folder, and the paperwork Lynley had given him on the previous day. He folded his hands neatly across the top of it all and asked Lynley what he knew about profiling. Lynley told him he’d never yet had an occasion to use a profiler, although he was aware of what profilers did. He didn’t add any comments about his reluctance to use one or about his belief that, in truth, Robson had only been called in in the first place to give Hillier something to hand to that ravenous dog the media.

“Would you like some background on profiling, then?” Robson asked.

“Not particularly, to tell you the truth.”

Robson observed him evenly. His eyes behind his spectacles looked shrewd, but he made no remark other than to say obscurely, “Right. We’ll see about it, won’t we.” He took up his legal pad without further ado.

They were looking, he told Lynley, for a white male between twenty-five and thirty-five. He would be neat in his appearance: close shaven, short haired, in good physical condition, which was possibly the result of weight training. He would be known to the victims, but not well known. He would be of high intelligence but low achievement, a man with a decent school record but with disciplinary problems stemming from a chronic failure to obey. He would likely possess a history of job losses, and while he would probably be working at this time, it would be in employment below his capabilities. They would find criminal behaviour in his childhood and adolescence: possibly petty arson or cruelty to animals. He would be at this time unmarried and living either alone or with a dominant parent.

Despite what he already knew about profiling, Lynley felt doubtful about the number of details Robson had provided. He said, “How can you know all this, Dr. Robson?”

Robson’s lips moved in a smile that tried-and failed-not to look satisfied. He said, “I do assume you know what profilers do, Superintendent, but do you know how and why profiling actually works? It’s rarely inaccurate, and it’s nothing to do with crystal balls, tarot cards, or the entrails of sacrificed animals.”

At this, smacking of the gentle correction a parent gives to a wayward child, Lynley considered half a dozen ways to regain dominance. They were all a waste of time, he concluded. So he said, “Should we begin again with each other?”

Robson smiled, genuinely this time. “Thank you,” he said. He went on to tell Lynley that to know a killer, one merely had to look at the crime committed, which was what the Americans had begun doing when the FBI had developed their Behavioural Science Unit. By gathering information over the decades of pursuing serial killers and by actually interviewing incarcerated serial killers by the dozens, they’d discovered there were certain commonalities that could be depended upon to be present in the profile of the perpetrator of a certain kind of crime. In this particular crime, for example, they could rely upon the fact that the killings were bids for power although their killer would tell himself that the killings had another reason entirely.

“Not just killing for the thrill of it?”

“Not at all,” Robson answered. “This actually has nothing to do with thrill. This man’s striking out because he’s been frustrated, contradicted, or thwarted. Whatever thrill there is, is secondary.”

“Thwarted by the victim?”

“No. A stressor has set him on this course, but its source isn’t the victim.”

“Who is it, then? What?”

“A recent job loss that the killer thinks is unfair. The breakup of a marriage or another amorous relationship. The death of a loved one. The rejection of a proposal of marriage. A court injunction. A sudden loss of money. The destruction of a home by fire, flood, earthquake, hurricane. Think of something that would put your world or anyone’s world into chaos and you’ll have a stressor.”

“We all have them in our lives,” Lynley said.

“But not all of us are psychopaths. It’s the combination of the psychopathic personality and the stressor that’s deadly, not the stressor alone.” Robson fanned out the crime-scene photographs.

Despite the aspects of the crime suggesting sadism-the burnt hands, for example-their killer felt a certain amount of remorse for what he’d done once he’d done it, Robson said. The body in each case told them that: its position traditional to corpses placed in coffins prior to burial, not to mention the fact that the final victim wore what amounted to a loincloth. This, he said, was called psychic erasure or psychic restitution.

“It’s as if the killing were a sad duty that the perpetrator believes and tells himself he must perform.”

Lynley felt this was going too far. The rest he could swallow; there was sense to it. But this…restitution? Penance? Sorrow? Why do it four times if he felt remorse afterwards?

“The conflict for him,” Robson said, as if in reply to the questions Lynley hadn’t asked, “is the compulsion to kill, which has been triggered by the stressor and can only be relieved by the act of killing itself, versus the knowledge that what he’s doing is wrong. And he does know that, even as he is driven to do it again and again.”

“So you believe he’ll strike another time,” Lynley said.

“There’s no question about it. This is going to escalate. It’s actually escalated from the first. You can see that in how he’s been upping the stakes. Not only in where he’s put the bodies-taking bigger risks of discovery every time he positions one-but also in what he’s done to the bodies.”

“Increasing the marking on them?”

“What we call making his signature more apparent. It’s as if he believes the police are too stupid to catch him, so he’s going to taunt you a bit. He’s burned the hands three times, and you’ve failed to make the connection between the killings. So he’s had to do more.”

“But why so much more? Wouldn’t it have been enough just to slice open the final victim? Why add the mark on the forehead? Why the loincloth? Why take the navel?”

“If we discount the loincloth as psychic restitution, we’re left with the slice, the missing navel, and the mark on the forehead. If we see the slice as part of a ritual that we as yet don’t understand and the missing navel as a gruesome souvenir that allows him to relive the event, then what we really have is the mark on the forehead to serve as a conscious escalation of the crime.”

“What do you make of that mark?” Lynley asked him.

Robson took up one of the photographs that featured it particularly. “It’s rather like a cattle brand, isn’t it? I mean the mark itself, not how it was made. A circle with two two-headed crosses quadrisecting it. It clearly stands for something.”

“So you’re saying it’s not a signature on the crime like the other indicators?”

“I’m saying it’s more than a signature because it’s too deliberate a choice to be merely a signature. Why not use a simple X if you just want your mark on the body? Why not a cross? Why not one of your initials? Any of those would be quicker to put on your victim than this. Especially when time is probably of the essence.”

“You’re saying this mark serves a dual purpose, then?”

“I’d say so. No artist signs a painting till it’s done, and the fact that this mark was made with the victim’s blood tells us that it was likely put on his forehead after death. So yes, it’s a signature, but it’s something more. I think it’s a direct communication.”

“With the police?”

“Or with the victim. Or the victim’s family.” Robson handed the photographs back to Lynley. “Your killer has an enormous need to be noticed, Superintendent. If it isn’t satisfied by the current publicity-which it won’t be because his sort of need is never actually satisfied by anything, you see-then he’ll strike again.”

“Soon?”

“I’d say you can depend upon that.” He handed Lynley the reports as well. He included with them his own report, which he took from the manila folder, neatly typed and official, with a cover sheet on the letterhead of Fischer Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Lynley added the reports to the photographs Robson had already handed over, along with his card. He thought about everything the profiler had said. He knew other officers who believed completely in the art-or perhaps it was a real science based on irrefutable empirical evidence-of psychological profiling, but he had never been one of them. Put to the test, he’d always preferred his own mind and a sifting through concrete facts to trying to take those same facts and from them create a portrait of someone utterly unknown to him. Besides, he couldn’t see how it actually helped the situation. At the end of the day, they still had to locate a killer among the ten million people who lived in Greater London, and he wasn’t clear on how the profile Robson had provided was going to help do that. The psychologist appeared to know this, however. He added a final detail, as if to put a full stop to his report.

“You also need to prepare yourself for contact,” he said.

“What sort?” Lynley asked.

“From the killer himself.”

ALONE, He was Fu, Creature Divine, eternal Deity of what must be. He was the truth and His was the way, but the knowledge of this was no longer enough.

The need was upon Him again. It had come far sooner than He had expected. It had come in days instead of in weeks, possessing Him with the call to act. Yet despite the pressure to judge and avenge, to redeem and release, He still moved with care. It was essential He choose correctly. A sign would tell, and so He waited. For there had always been a sign.

A loner was best. He knew that much. And naturally, there were loners aplenty to choose from in a city like London, but following one of them was the only way to confirm His selection as right and apt.

Secure in the camouflage of other passengers, Fu performed this task by bus. His chosen one climbed aboard ahead of Him, immediately making for the curve of stairs to the upper saloon. Fu did not follow him there. Instead, once onboard, He remained below, where He took a position two poles away from the exit door with a view of the stairs.

Their journey turned out to be a long one. They inched along congested streets. At each of the stops, Fu kept His attention fixed on the exit. Between the stops, He entertained Himself by studying His companions in the lower saloon: the tired mother with the screaming toddler, the ageing spinster with sagging ankles, the schoolgirls with coats unbuttoned and blouses hanging out of their skirts, the Asian youths with their heads together making plans, the black youths with their earphones on and their shoulders moving to the beat of music no one else could hear. All of them were in need, but most of them didn’t know it. And none of them knew Who stood among them, for anonymity was the greatest gift of living in this place.

Someone somewhere pressed the button that would alert the driver to pull over at the next request stop. A clatter from the stairs and a large mixed group of youths descended. Fu saw that the chosen one was among them, and He eased His own way down the aisle to the door. He ended up directly behind His prey and He could smell the scent of him when He stood on the steps before they disembarked. It was the rank odour of the boy’s early adolescence, restless and randy.

Out on the street, Fu hung back, giving the boy a good twenty yards. The pavement wasn’t as crowded here as it had been elsewhere, and Fu looked round to get an idea of exactly where He was.

The area was mixed race: black, white, Asian, and Oriental. The voices here spoke a dozen languages, and while no one group looked completely out of place, somehow every individual did.

Fear did that to people, Fu thought. Distrust. Caution. Expect the unexpected from any quarter. Be ready either to flee or to fight. Or to go unnoticed, if that was possible.

The chosen one adhered to this latter principle. He walked, head down, and appeared to acknowledge no one he passed. This, Fu thought, was all to the good when it came to His own intentions.

When the boy reached his destination, though, it was not his home, as Fu had thought it might be. Instead, he walked from the bus stop down the length of a commercial area of markets, video shops, and betting parlours till he came to a small shop with soap-covered windows, and there he entered.

Fu crossed the street so that He could observe from the shadows of the doorway to a bicycle shop. The place the boy had entered was well lit, and despite the cold the door was propped open. Brightly clad men and women stood about chatting while among them children darted noisily. The boy himself was talking to a tall man in a colourful collarless shirt that hung to his hips. He had skin the hue of white coffee, and round his neck hung a carved wooden necklace. There appeared to be some sort of connection between this individual and the boy, but it was something less than father and son. For there was no father. Fu knew that. So this man…this particular man…Perhaps, Fu thought, He had not chosen wisely after all.

He was soon reassured. The crowd took seats and began singing. They did so haltingly. Taped music accompanied their efforts, heavy on drums and suggesting Africa. Their leader-the man the boy had spoken to-repeatedly stopped and started them again. While this was going on, the boy himself slipped out. He came back into the street, zipping his jacket, and he headed in the shadows farther along the commercial area. Fu followed, unseen.

Up ahead, the boy turned a corner and headed down another street. Fu hurried His own pace and was just in time to see him duck inside the doorway of a windowless brick building next to a scruffy workman’s café. Fu paused, assessing. He didn’t wish to risk being seen but He needed to know if His choice of the boy was legitimate.

He sidled up to the door. He found it unlocked, so He eased it open. An unlit corridor led to the doorway of a large room that was fully illuminated. From this room came the sounds of thuds, grunts, and the occasional guttural noise of a man ordering someone to “Jab, God damn it” and “Use an upper cut, for Christ’s sake.”

Fu entered this place. Immediately, He smelled the dust and the sweat, the leather and the mildew, the unwashed male clothes. Along the walls of the corridor, posters hung, and midway to the bright room beyond, a trophy cabinet stood. Fu snaked along the wall with care. He had nearly gained the doorway when someone spoke from out of nowhere.

“You need something, man?”

It was a black male voice and none too friendly. Fu allowed Himself to diminish in size before He turned to see who owned it. A refrigerator made flesh stood on the bottom step of a darkened stairway that Fu had not noticed. He was dressed for outdoors and he was slapping a pair of gloves against his palm. He repeated his question.

“Wha’ you need, man? This’s private premises.”

Fu had to be rid of him, but He also had to see. Somehow, He knew, this building contained the affirmation He needed before He could act. He said, “Sorry. I didn’t know it was private. I saw a few blokes come out and I wondered what this place was. I’m new round here.”

The man observed him, saying nothing.

Fu added, “I’m looking for new digs,” and He smiled affably. “Just doing a recce of the area. Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.” He gave His shoulders a little hunch for effect. He moved towards the front door although He had no intention of leaving, and even if He was forced out to the street by this lout, He would return as soon as the other man was gone.

The black said, “You c’n have a look, then. But don’t be bothering no one, you got that?”

Fu felt a bubble of anger rising. The tone of voice, the audacity of the order. He breathed in calm with the stale air of the corridor, and He said, “What is this place?”

“Boxing gym. You c’n have a look. Just try not to look like a punch bag.” The black left then, laughing at his weak attempt at wit. Fu watched him depart. He found that He was longing to follow, to give in to the temptation to let the other learn with whom he had just spoken. The longing fast grew into a hunger, but He refused to submit. Instead, He went to the bright doorway and, keeping to the darkness, He gazed into the room from which the grunts and thuds were coming.

Punch bags, speed bags, two boxing rings. Free weights. A treadmill. Skipping ropes. Two video cameras. Equipment was everywhere. So were the men using the equipment. Mostly blacks, but there were half a dozen white youths among them. And the man who’d been doing the shouting was also white: bald as a baby and wearing a grey towel round his shoulders. He was instructing two boxers in the ring. They were black, sweating, panting like overheated dogs.

Fu sought out the boy. He found him pounding a punch bag. He’d changed his clothes and was wearing a tracksuit. Already, it bore large crescents of sweat.

Fu watched as he pummeled the bag without either style or precision. He hurled himself upon it and pounded ferociously, ignoring everything else around him.

Ah, Fu thought. The journey across London had been well worth the risk after all. What He witnessed now had been worth even the brief interlude with the lout on the stairs. For unlike any other moment before this when Fu had been able to study the boy, this time the chosen one stood revealed.

He had an anger within him to match Fu’s own. He was indeed in need of redemption.

FOR A SECOND TIME, Winston Nkata didn’t go straight home. Instead, he followed the river to Vauxhall Bridge, where he crossed and circled round the Oval once again. He did it all without thinking, simply telling himself that it was time. The press conference made everything easier. Yasmin Edwards would know something about the murders at this point, so his purpose in calling would be to emphasise those details whose importance she might not have fully understood.

It was only when he’d parked across from Doddington Grove Estate that Nkata came fully to what he considered to be his senses. And that didn’t turn out to be an ideal situation, because coming to his senses also meant coming to his sensations, and the one he felt as he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel was again largely cowardice.

On the one hand, he did have the excuse he’d been looking for. More than that, he had the duty he’d taken the attestation to perform. Surely it was a small enough matter to impart the necessary information to her. So why he should be feeling nerved out about doing his job… It was way beyond him to suss that one out.

Except, Nkata knew that he was lying to himself even as he allowed himself thirty seconds to do so. There were half a dozen reasons for his being reluctant to ride the lift up to that third-floor flat, and not the least of them was what he’d deliberately done to the woman who lived within it.

He hadn’t really come to terms with why he’d assigned himself the job of making Yasmin Edwards aware of her lover’s infidelity. It was one thing to be in honest pursuit of a killer; it was quite another to want the killer to be someone who stood in the way of Nkata himself achieving…what? He didn’t want to consider the answer to that question.

He said, “Come on, man,” and shoved open the car door. Yasmin Edwards might have knifed her own husband and done time for it. But the one thing he knew for certain was that if it came to knives between them, he had far more experience in wielding one.

There had been a time when he would have rung a different flat to gain access to the lift, telling the occupant at the other end of the buzzer that he was a cop so he could ride up to the third floor and knock on Yasmin Edwards’ door without her knowing he was on his way. But he didn’t allow himself to do that now. Instead, he buzzed her flat and when he heard her voice asking who was there, he said, “Police, Missus Edwards. I’ll need a word please.”

A hesitation made him wonder if she’d recognised his voice. A moment later, though, she released the lock on the lift. Its doors slid open and he stepped inside.

He thought she might meet him at the door to her flat, but it was as firmly closed as ever-with the curtains drawn for the evening at the sitting-room window-when he strode down the outdoor corridor to it. She answered quickly enough when he knocked, though, which told him she must have been standing just inside, waiting for his arrival.

She observed him expressionlessly, and she didn’t have to lift her head much to do so. For Yasmin Edwards was an elegant six feet tall and as imposing a presence as she’d been when he’d first met her. She’d changed out of her work clothes and was wearing striped pyjamas. She wore nothing else, and he knew her well enough to recognise that she’d deliberately put on no dressing gown when she’d heard who’d come calling, which was her way of signaling to the police that she feared nothing from them, having experienced the worst at their hands already.

Yas, Yas, he wanted to say. That’s not the way it has to be.

But instead, he said, “Missus Edwards,” and reached for his identification, as if he believed she didn’t remember who he was.

She said, “What is it, man? ’Nother murderer you’re sniffing up round here? No one in this flat capable of that but me, so when is it I need the alibi for?”

He shoved his warrant card back into his pocket. He didn’t sigh, although he wanted to. He said, “Could I have a word, Missus Edwards? Truth to tell, it’s about Dan.”

She looked alarmed, in spite of herself. But as if she suspected a trick of some kind, she remained where she was, blocking his entrance. She said, “You best tell me what’s about Daniel, Constable.”

“Sergeant now,” Nkata said. “Or does that make it worse?”

She cocked her head. He found he missed the sight and the sound of her 101 beaded plaits, although her close-cropped hair suited her just as well. She said, “Sergeant, is it? That what you come to tell Daniel?”

“I didn’t come to talk to Daniel,” he said patiently. “I come to talk to you. About Daniel. I c’n do it outside if that’s what you want, Missus Edwards, but you’re gonna get colder if you stand there much longer.” He felt his face get hot because of what his words implied about what he’d noticed: the tips of her breasts peaking against the flannel of the pyjama top, her exposed skin the colour of walnut goose-fleshing where the top formed a V. As best he could, Nkata avoided looking at the vulnerable parts of her that were open to the winter air, but still he could see the smooth and stately curve of her neck, the mole he’d never noticed before, beneath her right ear.

She shot him a look of contempt and reached behind the door where, he knew, she kept a line of hooks for coats. She brought from it a heavy cardigan, which she took her time about donning and buttoning to the throat. When she was garbed to her liking, she gave him her attention again. “Better?” she asked.

“Whatever’s best for you.”

“Mum?” It was her son’s voice, coming from his bedroom doorway, which, Nkata knew, was to the left of the front door. “Wha’s going on? Who’s-” Daniel Edwards stepped into view just beyond Yasmin’s shoulders. His eyes widened when he saw who was calling on them, and his grin was contagious, exposing those perfect white teeth of his, so adult in his twelve-year-old face.

Nkata said, “’Lo, Dan. Wha’s happening?”

“Hey!” Daniel said. “You ’member my name.”

“He’s got it in his records,” Yasmin Edwards said to her son. “Tha’s what cops do. Are you ready for the cocoa yet? It’s in the kitchen if you want it. Homework finished?”

“You coming in?” Daniel said to Nkata. “We got cocoa. Mum makes it fresh. I have enough to share ’f you like.”

“Dan! Is your hearing-”

“Sorry, Mum,” Daniel said. That grin again, though. Daniel disappeared through the kitchen doorway. The opening and closing of cupboards ensued from that direction.

“In?” Nkata said to the boy’s mother, with a nod at the interior of the flat. “This’ll take five minutes. I c’n promise that, cos I got to get home.”

“I don’t want you trying to get Dan-”

Nkata raised his hands in a sign of surrender. “Missus Edwards, I bother you since what happened happened? No, right? I think you c’n trust me.”

She seemed to think this over while, behind her, the cheerful clatter continued in the kitchen. Finally, she swung the door open. Nkata stepped inside and shut it behind him before she had a chance to change her mind.

He gave a quick look round. He’d determined not to care about what he might find inside, but he couldn’t help his curiosity. When he’d met Yasmin Edwards, she’d been living as lovers with a German woman, a lag like herself who’d done time for murder, also like herself. So he wondered if the German had been replaced.

There was no sign of this being the case. Everything was much as it had been before. He turned to Yasmin and found her watching him. She held her arms crossed beneath her breasts and her face read, Satisfied?

He hated being off balance with her. He wasn’t used to that with women. He said, “There’s a boy been murdered. Body was put up in St. George’s Gardens, near Russell Square, Missus Edwards.”

She said with a shrug, “North of the river,” as if she meant, How can that affect this part of town?

He said, “No. It’s more than that. This’s one of a string of boys been found all over town. Gunnersbury Park, Tower Hamlets, carpark in Bayswater, and now the garden. One in the garden’s white, but the rest of them, looks like all been mixed race. And young, Missus Edwards. Kids.”

She shot a look towards the kitchen. He knew what she was thinking: Her Daniel fitted the profile he’d just described. He was young; he was mixed race. Still, she shifted her weight to one hip and said to Nkata, “All north of the river. Don’t affect us over here. And why’re you really here, ’f you don’t mind my asking?,” as if everything she said and the abrupt way she said it could protect her from fearing for her boy’s safety.

Before Nkata could answer, Daniel returned to them, a cup of steaming cocoa in his hand. He appeared to avoid his mother’s look as he said to Nkata, “I brought you this anyway. It’s made from scratch. You c’n have more sugar in it if you want.”

“Cheers, Dan.” Nkata took the mug from the boy and clasped him on the shoulder. Daniel grinned and shifted from one bare foot to the other. “Look like you grown since I saw you,” Nkata added.

“Did,” Daniel said. “We measured. We got marks on a wall in the kitchen. You c’n see if you want. Mum marks me first of every month. I grew two inches.”

“Sprouting up like that,” Nkata said, “make your bones hurt?”

“Yeah! How’d you know? Oh, I ’xpect cos you grew fast as well.”

“Tha’s right,” Nkata said. “Five inches one summer. Ouch.”

Daniel laughed. He appeared ready to settle in for a chat, but his mother stopped this by saying his name sharply. Daniel looked from Nkata to her, then back to Nkata.

“Have your cocoa,” Nkata said. “See you later.”

“Yeah?” The boy’s face asked that a promise be made.

Yasmin Edwards didn’t allow it, saying, “Daniel, this man’s here on business, nothing else.” That was enough. The boy scooted back to the kitchen, casting one final look over his shoulder. Yasmin waited till he was gone before she said to Nkata, “Anything else?”

He took a gulp of the cocoa and set the mug on the iron-legged coffee table where the same red high-heel-shaped ashtray still sat, empty now that the German woman who’d used it was gone from Yasmin Edwards’ life. He said, “You got to have more of a care right now. With Dan.”

Her lips flattened. “You trying to tell me-”

“No,” he said. “You the best mum that boy could have in the world, and I mean it, Yasmin.” He startled himself with his use of her given name, and he was grateful when she pretended not to notice. He hurried on. “I know you got stuff to do coming out ’f your ears, what with the wig business an’ all that. Dan spends time on his own, not cos that’s the way you want it but cos that’s how it is. All I’m saying is, this bleeder’s picking up boys Dan’s age and he’s killing them, and I don’t want that to happen to Dan.”

“He’s not stupid,” Yasmin said curtly, although Nkata could tell this was all bravado. She wasn’t stupid, either.

“I know that, Yas. But he’s…” Nkata searched for the words. “You c’n tell he needs a man. ’S obvious. An’ from what we c’n tell ’bout the boys been killed…They’re going with him. They’re not fighting it. No one sees anything cos there’s nothing to see cos they trust him, okay?”

“Daniel i’n’t about to go with some-”

“We think he uses a van,” Nkata cut in, persisting in spite of her evident scorn. “We think it’s red.”

“I’m saying. Daniel doesn’t take rides. Not from people he doesn’ know.” She cast a look in the direction of the kitchen. She lowered her voice. “What’re you saying? You think I di’n’t teach him that?”

“I know you taught him. Like I said, I c’n see you’re a good mum to the boy. But that doesn’ change what the fact is inside of him, Yas. And the fact is, he needs a man.”

“Thinkin’ you’re going to be it or something?”

“Yas.” Now that he’d begun saying her name, Nkata found he couldn’t say it enough. It was an addiction for him, one he knew he had to be rid of in very short order or he would be lost, like a needle freak dossing in a doorway in the Strand. So he tried again. “Missus Edwards, I know Dan spends time on his own cos you’re busy. And tha’s not good and tha’s not bad. It’s just how it is. All I want you to unnerstan is wha’s going on in your neighbourhood, see?”

“Fine,” she said. “I un’erstand now.” She moved past him to the door and reached for the knob, saying, “You did what you come for, and now you can-”

“Yas!” Nkata wouldn’t be dismissed. He was there to do the woman a service whether she liked it or not, and that service was to impress upon her the danger and urgency of the situation, neither of which she apparently wished to grasp. “There’s a bugger out there going after boys just like Daniel,” Nkata said rather more hotly than he would have liked. “He’s getting them in a van and he’s burning their hands till the skin goes black. Then he’s strangling them and he’s slicing them open.” He had her attention now, and that spurred him to continue, as if each word were a way he proved something to her, although what that something was he didn’t want to consider at the moment. “Then he marks them up a bit more with their own blood. And then he puts their bodies on display. Boys go with him and we don’t know why and till we know…” He saw that her face had changed. Anger, horror, and fear had metamorphosed into…What was it he was seeing?

She was looking beyond him, her gaze fixed on the kitchen. And he knew. Just like that-as if fingers had snapped in front of his face and he suddenly returned to consciousness, he knew. He didn’t have to turn. He only had to wonder how long Daniel had been standing in the doorway and how much he had heard.

Aside from having given Yasmin Edwards a wealth of information that she did not need and that he was not authorised to give to anyone, he’d frightened her son, and he knew that without looking, just as he knew he’d long outstayed whatever welcome he might have had in Doddington Grove Estate.

“Done enough?” Yasmin Edwards whispered fiercely, moving her gaze from her son to Nkata. “Said enough? Seen enough?”

Nkata tore his gaze from her, moving it to take in Daniel. He was standing in the doorway with a piece of toast in his hand, one leg crossed over the other and squeezing as if he needed the toilet. His eyes were big, and what Nkata felt was sorrow that he’d had to see or hear his mum in anything resembling an altercation with a man. He said to Daniel, “I d’n’t want you to hear that, man. No need and I’m sorry. You just be careful on the street. There’s a killer going after boys your age. I don’t want him going after you.”

Daniel nodded. He looked solemn. He said, “’Kay.” And then when Nkata turned to leave, “You come round again or what?”

Nkata didn’t answer him directly. He said, “You just keep safe, okay?” And as he stepped out of the flat, he ventured a final look at Daniel Edwards’ mother. His expression said to her, What did I tell you, Yasmin? Daniel needs a man.

Her expression responded just as clearly, Whatever you’re thinking, that man i’n’t you.